As to a northern people (whom the sun
Uses just as the Romish church has done
Her prophane laity, and does assign
Bread only both to serve for bread and wine)
A rich Canary fleet welcome arrives;
Such comfort to us here your letter gives,
Fraught with brisk racy verses; in which we
The soil from whence they came, taste, smell, and see:
Such is your present to us; for you must know,
Sir, that verse does not in this island grow,
No more than sack; one lately did not fear
(Without the Muses’ leave) to plant it here;
But it produc’d such base, rough, crabbed, hedge-
Rhymes, as ev’n set the hearers’ ears on edge:
Written by – – Esquire, the
Year of our Lord six hundred thirty-three.
Brave Jersey Muse! and he’s for this high style
Call’d to this day the Homer of the Isle.
Alas! to men here no words less hard be
To rhyme with, than * Mount Orgueil is to me;
Mount Orgueil! which, in scorn o’ th’ Muses’ law,
With no yoke-fellow word will deign to draw.
Stubborn Mount Orgueil! ‘t is a work to make it
Come into rhyme, more hard than ‘t were to take it.
Alas! to bring your tropes and figures here,
Strange as to bring camels and elephants were;
And metaphor is so unknown a thing,
‘T would need the preface of “God save the King.”
Yet this I’ll say, for th’ honour of the place,
That, by God’s extraordinary grace
(Which shows the people have judgment, if not wit)
The land is undefil’d with Clinches yet;
Which, in my poor opinion, I confess,
Is a most singular blessing, and no less
Than Ireland’s wanting spiders. And, so far
From th’ actual sin of bombast too they are,
(That other crying sin o’ th’ English Muse)
That even Satan himself can accuse
None here (no not so much as the divines)
For th’ motus primò primi to strong lines.
Well, since the soil then does not naturally bear
Verse, who (a devil) should import it here?
For that to me would seem as strange a thing
As who did first wild beasts into islands bring;
Unless you think that it might taken be
As Green did Gondibert, in a prize at sea:
But that’s a fortune falls not every day;
‘Tis true Green was made by it; for they say
The parliament did a noble bounty do,
And gave him the whole prize, their tenths and fifteens too.
A few random poems:
- Hither, Hither, Love poem – John Keats poems
- On Deck by Sylvia Plath
- The Rupaiyat of Omar Kal’vin by Rudyard Kipling
- Four Quartets 3: The Dry Salvages by T. S. Eliot
- Prologue spoken at the Theatre of Dumfries by Robert Burns
- The Watchman
- The Riddle
- Ольга Ермолаева – Ты где летал, мой падающий с Фанских гор
- Владимир Британишский – Итальянское путешествие
- Moonlit Night by Tu Fu
- Lines Written On Visiting The Chateaux On The Loire poem – Alfred Austin
- I Wish This Lovely Time Never Ends by Miraj Patel
- Soul’s Birth by Sara Teasdale
- Salve! by Thomas Edward Brown
- one_sweet_white_light.html
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- The Seven Sisters by William Wordsworth
- The Sailor’s Mother by William Wordsworth
- The Russian Fugitive by William Wordsworth
- The Reverie of Poor Susan by William Wordsworth
- The Redbreast Chasing The Butterfly by William Wordsworth
- The Prioress’s Tale [from Chaucer] by William Wordsworth
- The Primrose of the Rock by William Wordsworth
- The Power of Armies is a Visible Thing by William Wordsworth
- The Pet-Lamb by William Wordsworth
- The Passing of the Elder Bards by William Wordsworth
- The Old Cumberland Beggar by William Wordsworth
- The Oak Of Guernica Supposed Address To The Same by William Wordsworth
- The Morning Of The Day Appointed For A General Thanksgiving. January 18, 1816 by William Wordsworth
- The King Of Sweden by William Wordsworth
- The Idle Shepherd Boys by William Wordsworth
- The Horn Of Egremont Castle by William Wordsworth
- The Highland Broach by William Wordsworth
- The Happy Warrior by William Wordsworth
- The Green Linnet by William Wordsworth
- The Germans On The Heighs Of Hochheim by William Wordsworth
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works

Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667), the Royalist Poet.Poet and essayist Abraham Cowley was born in London, England, in 1618. He displayed early talent as a poet, publishing his first collection of poetry, Poetical Blossoms (1633), at the age of 15. Cowley studied at Cambridge University but was stripped of his Cambridge fellowship during the English Civil War and expelled for refusing to sign the Solemn League and Covenant of 1644. In turn, he accompanied Queen Henrietta Maria to France, where he spent 12 years in exile, serving as her secretary. During this time, Cowley completed The Mistress (1647). Arguably his most famous work, the collection exemplifies Cowley’s metaphysical style of love poetry. After the Restoration, Cowley returned to England, where he was reinstated as a Cambridge fellow and earned his MD before finally retiring to the English countryside. He is buried at Westminster Abbey alongside Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser. Cowley is a wonderful poet and an outstanding representative of the English baroque.